Trip Leader – Jane Coulter

Shag Point is always a place that I love to visit. The unusual sphere shaped rock formations set into the rock platform just capture my imagination. Jane had chosen the perfect weekend with low tide at sunrise, so we had almost everything in our favor – except the weather.

Although it was drizzling Saturday morning, which stopped our sunrise photos, it stopped raining early so we still had plenty of time at Shag Point. The surface was very slippery this time and while I was trying to carefully navigate my way across the rock platform I remembered last weeks Top Gear show describing the Lamborghini car. Lots of fun but very scary and you know that things can change in the blink of an eye. Yes I thought this is just like that! Fun but scary and I have to be totally focused on where I am stepping as quick as a flash I could be on the ground if I make the wrong choice. With a little help from our fellow photographers and at a snails pace I slowly and carefully navigated my way along the beach capturing images. The light was now warm on the golden rocks and our group of 16 was spread from one end of the beach to the other.

Of course after all that hard work we went for a well deserved coffee at Fleurs, before checking out the seal colony and a few of the little beach houses and bays around Moeraki.

We had dinner at Fleurs on Saturday night and Fleur as usual was spending time at each table socialising. We dined on all types of seafood and Peter had “the best lamb shanks ever”, which we joked were Fleurs newborn Pitcarn Island black and white spotted lambs that she encouraged us to photograph.

Sunday we got up for sunrise (although some of us slept in! But that never stopped us from getting to the beach on time). Although still quite cloudy there was a bit of colour fighting to come through and we enjoyed capturing the boulders, reflections, and water movement. We finished the weekend with a visit to a new stretch of beach that David recommended before slowly making our way home.

Cheers Kim

Images from flickr gallery